1. What's the logic here? Because a business is trying to reduce its expenses, it's wrong on any matter by default?
2. You are aware that DTAG does not peer at DE-CIX, so whether "peering is most dense" there has exactly no influence on whether Hetzner gets good connectivity to DTAG?
3. You are aware that Hetzner does peer at DE-CIX with 200 Gbit/s, with an open peering policy?
4. You are aware that Hetzner even peers at AMS-IX in Amsterdam with 100 Gbit/s? That link almost certainly is even more expensive than the one to DE-CIX.
1. The idea was to make an example of the company favoring cost effevtiveness over quality. which may not be bad ... but it should underline the cheap-assiness.
2. dtag is ofc present in frankfurt and at de-cix, with little capacity for public peerings as mentioned.
This and your 3/4 each make sense, as they represent a legit business interest for the different sides.
Hetzner preffering cheapass open and dtag preffering scalable private peerings.
Problem i see is Hetzner externalizing the cost of private peerings.
Which in return plays into 1. and the example of them externalizing other cost factors.
1. How exactly is labor, land, power, or dark fiber lower quality in east Germany (if we ignore the fact that Nuremberg doesn't really qualify for being cheap nor for being in east Germany)? If anything, the subsidies might suggest that operating a business is actually more expensive, which is why it's being subsidised.
5. You are also aware that they operate some 170 Gbit/s of private peering?
6. Which costs exactly are they externalizing with regards to peering in your opinion? So far, your argument seems to be "they don't pay as much as DTAG would like them to, therefore, they are externalizing the difference between DTAG's wishes and what they are willing to pay" - which isn't exactly how you determine externalities.
Without any additional details your contrasting of "cheapass open" vs "scalable private peerings" seems completely baseless. Why is DTAG not the cheapass for skimping on their public pairings?
2. You are aware that DTAG does not peer at DE-CIX, so whether "peering is most dense" there has exactly no influence on whether Hetzner gets good connectivity to DTAG?
3. You are aware that Hetzner does peer at DE-CIX with 200 Gbit/s, with an open peering policy?
4. You are aware that Hetzner even peers at AMS-IX in Amsterdam with 100 Gbit/s? That link almost certainly is even more expensive than the one to DE-CIX.
see also, peering list close to the end: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Rechenzentren_und_Anbindung...